Amazon May Send Robots to Your Door

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Jun 6, 9:15AM EDT

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Amazon May Send Robots to Your Door — © iLexx / Getty Images

Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN | AMZN Price Prediction) has spent years trying to reduce the costs of delivering packages. One of the earliest attempts was to cut out humans and trucks by using drones. Amazon has also tried to shave off delivery expenses by using its own drivers instead of those from UPS, the post office, or FedEx. The latest plan is to use robots to make deliveries.

The news service The Information reported that “AI-powered humanoid robots” would make deliveries. Amazon is testing delivery robots in a San Francisco warehouse.

Putting in a robot system may take years. To save a great deal of money, Amazon may have to combine robots with self-driving cars. Fully autonomous cars have not been approved for broad use yet.

The system could use Rivian vans. Amazon cut a deal to buy these vans when it invested in Rivian Automotive Inc. (NASDAQ: RIVN) in 2019. It said it planned to buy 100,000 Rivian vehicles. However, that deal has fallen apart.

If the robot system works, it may be because of Amazon’s overall progress in artificial intelligence (AI). The company recently said it would invest $10 billion in a North Carolina data center. It also said its total AI investment this year would be $100 billion.

A humanoid robot delivery system that works may result from Amazon’s AI prowess combined with its effort to cut e-commerce delivery time and costs.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.